Is Anybody There? (9 page)

Robbie’s voice came like an echo through a tunnel.

“It’s Robert Roberts, Miss Coriander. I’m Marcus’ friend.”

As soon as Miss Coriander headed for the front door I ran down the steps and back in our house.

“That was pretty smart,” I told Robbie when he came back. Not that I needed to tell him. He was saying, “How about that? Huh? What did you think of
that
for a trick?” He’d have been patting himself on the back if he could have reached.

“What did you say when she came to the door?” I asked.

“I took her those roses that were on your table and told her I hoped she’d have a real nice Christmas,” Robbie said.

“She
gave
us those roses. She grows them.”

“So? She didn’t recognize them. Now she
doesn’t have to pick any for herself. What did you find in Nick’s?”

“Nothing of ours. The place is clean. Maybe Nick is really OK.”

I was thinking of Anne and Nick and Blake, that softness in Nick’s face, and I was feeling lousy again. Did Mom know about them? And where was the photograph I’d seen of her the first time? It wasn’t around now.

“Are you sure there was nothing?” Robbie asked.

“I’m sure.”

“Why don’t we check your garage again,” he suggested. “I’ve got a great eye. Maybe I’ll see something missing that you missed.”

“That’s got to be the all-time wackiest sentence,” I said.

We did a real thorough job in the garage. Or at least I thought we did. But I’d forgotten one thing that I’d put out there because it took up too much room in my closet. And it wasn’t till later that I remembered it and realized it had disappeared too.

Robbie went home in the afternoon, taking the gift I’d bought for him. It was a Nerf Frisbee. Nerf Frisbees are great. I’ve been wanting one for a long time, and giving one to your friend is like getting one for yourself.

“I hope your mom likes her present and that you get a lot of super stuff,” Robbie said when he left.

“Yeah, thanks. Say Merry Christmas to everybody from me.”

When he’d gone, I took out a soft cloth and polished Mom’s bike and rubbed the Campies till they sparkled like sunlight. I tied a great bow on the handlebars before I went back inside. There was a game show on TV with a wheel and a ball and people jumping around. I watched for a while, trying not to think of
Nick and Blake. At four thirty I got up to switch the set off and peer out the window, something I seem to be doing on a regular basis these days. Anjelica Trotter was on my front porch. First came the fright and then the excitement, and before I knew what I was doing, I knocked on the window glass.

Anjelica jumped as if a firecracker had gone off at her feet. She stared at me and I stared at her. It was weird, because although she was back to looking like the scary grown-up Anjelica Trotter again, I wasn’t scared at all. I could still picture the mall Anjelica hidden underneath.

“Anjelica, wait,” I mouthed, and dashed for the front door.

When I opened it we were staring at one another again. “Oh, ah, hi, Marcus,” she said. She was wearing red shorts, a striped red-and-white shirt, and her red-and-green “Color Me Christmas” lipstick. Lots of it. The shirt was very bulgy in front, and I quickly decided Robbie was right about the extra two inches.

“Hi.” I tugged at the sides of my T-shirt, tucking them more neatly into my jeans. “Ah, so what’s happening, Anjelica?”

“Nothing. I was just, you know, riding by.” Her neck was getting a funny spotted pink. Maybe her face was, too, underneath all the junk she had on it. There was a white envelope in her hand. I glanced down at it and saw my name printed on the front. “I was just delivering this,” she said, and shoved it at me. She’d put a Santa sticker where the stamp should have been.

“Good idea,” I said. “You can’t be sure about the mails this time of year. It’s great to save postage.” I was secretly feeling around the envelope. This wasn’t just a card. There was something else in here, something small and bulky. A Christmas present, probably. And I had nothing for her. How embarrassing! I opened the door a little wider. “Would you like to come in?”

“I thought you weren’t allowed to have visitors,” she said in her old simpery way. I almost got scared again.

“I think it’s all right. Because it’s Christmas. And because my mom knows you now.”

“Well, OK. Should I just leave my bike here?”

“That’s fine.”

She passed me in a wave of perfume.

We stood in the hallway and I was thinking: What next? Anjelica Trotter in my house! What would Robbie say?

“You look very nice,” I muttered, insincerely.

“Thank you. I could have just died in the mall. I mean, I looked so awful, and then to meet you! The thing is, my parents don’t allow me to wear makeup. Not eye liner or lipstick or anything. They’re so old-fashioned. So I have to make myself look good when they’re not around. Thank goodness they both leave the house before I do in the mornings, or you could guess how nerdy I’d look in school!”

“Oh,” I said. “
I
thought you looked really nice at the mall. I mean really,
really
nice.” I was making a mess out of this. “Nicer than normal, even,” I added.

“Oh sure.” Anjelica bent her head, examining our hall rug or else the red-and-green laces in her tennies.

“No, I did think that.” I nodded and nodded to show how sincere I was. “I like girls with ordinary faces.”

“Ordinary?”

“I mean plain. No, not plain … I didn’t mean plain. Just without gunk on them.”

“Gunk?”

“Is it hot in here?” I asked. “I think maybe I turned on the heat by mistake. Do you want some juice?”

“I guess.”

I led the way to the kitchen, put the envelope on the table, and got two glasses from the cupboard. “We have orange or cranberry.”

“Orange please.” Anjelica hovered behind me.

I carried the glasses to the table and said politely, “Would you like to sit?”

She sat across from me, her hands curled around the glass. She had nice short, bitten nails, like mine, and fat little hands. Wow, I thought. Me and Anjelica having a drink together. Wait till I tell Robbie.

She stared around the kitchen. “Your house is pretty.”

“It’s OK.”

“Do you want to open your present now?” she asked, looking down at the envelope.

Criminy! So it was a present. “If you want. Mom and I usually open all our gifts tonight. I was going to keep yours.”

“I kind of want to see if you like it.”

“Well, sure.” I turned the envelope over. Across the flap were printed the letters
IWAKFC
and underneath the words: “You can ask me what this means.”

“So what does it mean?” I asked.

She was starting to blush again. “Oh nothing. Just ignore that. I was planning on leaving it, you see. I didn’t expect you to read it, not in front of me.”

“Oh, OK.” I ran my fingers under the glue, being careful not to tear the letters, which I planned on figuring out later. Inside was a small, sealed plastic envelope filled with stamps. “I’ve been collecting these for you for ages,” Anjelica said. “I remembered your display at open house.”

When I shook the envelope the stamps slithered around and I could see lots that I already had. I probably had all of them actually, since my collection is pretty extensive.

“My gran gave me this one.” Anjelica pointed through the plastic to a pink Italian
Rocca Maggiore Assisi stamp, which is really common. “A friend of hers is in Rome. She sent Gran a card.”

I’d had three of those that I’d traded at the last flea market. But of course I didn’t tell Anjelica that. “It’s great. They’re all great,” I said.

Our glasses were empty. Angelica’s had red-and-green smears around the rim. I guess she leaves her “Color Me Christmas” trademark wherever she goes.

“Well,” I said.

“Well.” Anjelica stood up.

I stood too, still holding the envelope. “I’m sorry I didn’t get you anything for Christmas, Anjelica. I didn’t know I’d be seeing you.”

She gave me the strangest look, sort of shy and sort of soppy. “I ride up and down your street a lot when I’ve got nothing better to do.”

Now it was my turn to blush. I could feel the burning even in my ears. She was telling me she
liked
me, telling me out loud, with just the two of us here!

“Well, Merry Christmas, Marky.”

Criminy! I hoped she didn’t start calling me
Marky in school. Robbie would die laughing.

“You too. Merry Christmas. And thanks again for the stamps.”

I watched her walk across the porch and down the steps. In a minute she’d be gone. She was almost at her bike. I
could
tell her about that guy Garcia from the chorus who wanted her to call, but I didn’t. Let him find her himself. I stared desperately down at the envelope.
IWAKFC.
Think fast, Marcus, think.

“Anjelica?” I called. “I’ve got it.”

“Got what?”

I jumped the steps from the top to the ground, showing off a bit. “The letters. Do they mean: ‘In Western Australia Kingfishers Favor Cod’?”

Anjelica laughed. She looked nice when she laughed, especially now that a whole lot of her Christmas lipstick was on the glass and not on her. “That’s not what it means,” she said.

“I didn’t really think so. It’s just, Robbie and I have a map of Australia in the garage, so I’m sort of Australia minded. Would you like to see it? The map? We’ve got Ood-nadatta in there. It’s a famous town, right in the middle.”

“Sure.” Anjelica stepped away from her bike.

“Wait a sec,” I said. I had to rush back inside to push the button to open the garage door. She was still there when I came out.

I showed her Australia and how you could step from Sydney to Perth. “A distance of over 2000 miles,” I said, “as the crow flies. Or the kookaburra. That’s an Australian bird that laughs. I have one on a stamp.”

Anjelica looked impressed.

I showed her Mom’s bike in detail and she was impressed even more.

She fingered the big red bow and stroked the shine of the racing handlebars. “I’d really like these kind on my bike,” she said. Before I realized what I was doing I was telling her how I’d found these in Henry’s trash and how I’d start looking for her if she wanted. How I’d even put them on for her, sort of a late Christmas present.

“Could you? That would be great,” Anjelica said.

“Nick got the special pedals for me.” I hadn’t meant to say that either.

“Who’s Nick?”

I spun both pedals at once. “Oh, nobody. A friend of my mother’s.” I pictured him again in the photograph, smiling down at his son, and I didn’t know how I felt. Sad? Angry? I couldn’t possibly be jealous, could I? “He’s really just a paying tenant,” I said.

Anjelica and I stood facing each other, shuffling around like a couple of kookaburras getting ready to dance. “I like your garage,” Anjelica said.

“It’s very comfortable.” I flicked my nail against the envelope. “Do you want to tell me what the letters mean now?”

Anjelica studied her tennies again and I joined her. We both watched her toes wiggle under the red canvas. “I’ll call you sometime and tell you,” she said at last.

“OK.”

I walked her to her bike and inspected the handlebars in a very professional way. “These will be real easy to take off, soon as I get the new ones. So. See you after Christmas.”

When she was well out of hearing distance, I leaped up to touch an overhanging jacaranda branch and yelled, “All right! Way to go, Marcus!”

“Marcus!” The voice was so close and so loud it made me jump again, although not as high. It was only Miss Sarah on the other side of the hedge. All I could see were her eyes and the tip of her nose. “What on earth are you whooping and hollering about, Marcus?”

“Oh, nothing.”

The blue eye and the brown eye examined me carefully. “Is that girl a friend of yours from school?”

“Yes. She’s in a couple of my classes.”

“Oh.” Miss Sarah can put more into one word than anybody I know. I wanted to laugh, imagining the way it had probably been. Chances are Miss Coriander had spotted Anjelica as soon as she came up on my porch.

“Sarah!” she’d have gasped the way she does. “Sarah, a
girl
just went into Marcus’ house.”

“A
girl
?”

“A very mature-looking girl. What should we do, Sarah? She and Marcus are
all alone.
”

“I’ll just go out there, Coriander. I’ll be on the other side of the hedge, and if the girl screams for help …”

“Of if Marcus screams for help, Sarah …”

“Is everything all right, Marcus?” Miss Sarah asked, watching me closely.

“Everything’s fine.”

“Be sure to lock up carefully behind you when you go in, Marcus. And don’t forget to close the garage door.”

“I won’t. Thanks.”

“See you tomorrow.”

I went inside, turned the lock real hard so she’d be sure to hear it click, swung the garage door down. In the kitchen I kept the envelope propped in front of me as I washed and dried the glasses.
IWAKFC.
If wishes and kookaburras … The
K
could stand for
kiss.
I almost dropped the glass.

Soon it would be dark. I wandered into the living room, lit the lamps, and turned on the tree lights. Mom would be home in a while and Christmas Eve with all its traditions would start. First we’d trim the tree and open the gifts. And tonight I’d sleep next to the tree the way I always do Christmas Eve, warm in my sleeping bag, smelling the cold forest smells, imagining … I stopped imagining before I began. Where
was
my sleeping bag? I’d taken it out of my closet and stashed it in
the garage a couple of weeks ago. I’d forgotten that when Robbie and I’d checked the garage earlier. Was it still there? I couldn’t remember. I couldn’t remember when I’d last seen it.

I went back in the kitchen, opened the garage, and turned on the light. On the workbench was the big bag of potting soil, the pile of clay pots, and the oil can. The tools hung neatly from the pegboard above. No sleeping bag. It was too big to miss, but I went out and moved everything anyway, checking. The sleeping bag was gone.